I'm in plat 4 currently and have been climbing pretty nicely (from gold 5 in the previous season, I did reach plat 5 in the pre-season however). I do like the current state of the game, I am a support main and people always say "supports can't climb" yada yada yada, but I've had no problem because outside of gold, players actually start to understand the game and so long as your ADC knows how to capitalize and be safe, supports can indeed carry a game (vicariously through their ADC ;) ). There seems to be less complete raging (although you will come across some toxic people) and in most games players tend to recognize and understand WHY a person is losing, as opposed to just telling them they suck. Albeit there are some people that truly seem boosted, but not too often. Also I have no problem with dynamic queue that so many people complain and bitch about. Sure there are some premades out there, but most of them are duo, and originally it was "solo/duo queue" so those duos shouldn't even be considered when complaining about premades. I know people in plat and diamond, and none of them have a problem with dynamic queue.
In terms of champions and balance and all that, it's not too bad, there are the obvious strong champions right now: zed, ryze, kindred, swain, lucian, ekko but just ban those and be on your way.
Because I main support, there is one thing I would like to change. As primarily a janna player, I get about 3/4 items into my build and I am maxed on cdr. For example, support item (10% cdr), locket (10%), ardent censer (10%) and that is without boots of lucidity, which is situational for me. now being at 30% (minimum) it's easy to go over, frozen heart(20%) + ______ (any other support item: mikeals, zekes, warmogs, ohmwrecker (all 10%)) will put me 20% over the cdr cap. And worst case scenario, is something like boots of lucidity (10%) support ward item (10%) and then frozen heart (20%) I am capped. and stuff like mikeals, zekes, warmogs, ohmwrecker, ardent censer, locket, all go over (while only having three items) This is the only thing I find annoying in the game, I feel like I either need to find another item to buy, to avoid going over. Or essentially waste money and stats by going over the cdr cap. This is the one gameplay type problem I have so far, but i suppose it's better than not having enough cdr choices.
The dragons have been interesting so far this season. Still not sure what I think about them, some of them seem way weaker than others and when one of the weak ones show up, it just sits there for 20 some minutes, which is no fun.
I cannot speak from experience, but I think a lot of the problems that a majority of the playerbase has (bronze and silver) could be solved by creating a level under bronze, that is essentially the master/challenger tier except you don't have to actually show the list of players, just give them points, say from 0-1000 is all the players below bronze 5. and then it will balance out the real new players compared to players who have played for a bit. I'm just speaking randomly and have no idea the effect on the rest of the tiers, but something like this could be implemented I think.
other than that, I'm glad to see riot has put in the effort of banning people and responding to reports. I will get the notices that "someone you have reported has been banned blah blah" a few times a week, and it's nice to know that it's actually working.
